Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ Even if the plaintiff in error is right, it shows only that the commissioners and courts of New York adopted too narrow a view upon a doubtful point in the measure of damages. It hardly even is so strong as that; for the ruling of the commissioners is not to be taken as an abstract universal proposition, but the judgment concerning this particular case, found by men presumably, as the plaintiff in error says, men of experience, who had or were free to acquire outside information concerning the general conditions of the taking and the selected site. ”

“ When property is taken by eminent domain, it equally is recognized that there must be something more than an ordinary honest mistake of law in the proceedings for compensation before a party can make out that the state has deprived him of his property unconstitutionally. ”

“ It is conceded 'that the owner is not permitted to take advantage of the necessities of the condemning party,' and it would seem that it well might be that the commissioners regarded it as too plain to be shaken by evidence, on the public facts, that the value of the land for a reservoir site could not come into consideration except upon the hypothesis that the city of New York could not get along without it, and that its only means of acquisition was voluntary sale by owners aware of the necessity, and intending to make from it the most they could. ”